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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST; 



OR, 



FAITH TZBI-A-T SAYES. 



REV. AMV\ PITZER, D.D., 

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE IN HOWARD UNI- 
VERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C. ; AUTHOR OF " THE 
NEW LIFE NOT THE HIGHER LIFE," ETC. 




" He that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he 
believeth not the record that God gave of his Son." — The Apostle 

3HT •%>, 

151889 'A 

PHILADELPHIA : 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 

AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK, 

No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



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COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY 

THE TRUSTEES OP THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK. 



ALL BIGHTS RESERVED. 



Thr Lt r^ry 

Ob CoN'>kESS 



WASHINGTON 



We8tcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada. 



INTEODUCTION. 



For thirty-and-three years have I trusted 
Christ as he is revealed in the Holy Script- 
ures; in all this time he has never in a 
single instance deceived or disappointed me. 
He is commended to all men everywhere as 
One in every way worthy of their most im- 
plicit confidence. 

That this work may lead the unsaved to 
trust him, and the saved to trust him more 
fully, is the prayer of the author. 

Washington, D. C, September 14, 1887. 



CONTENTS. 



SECTION I. 

PAGE 

The Importance of Faith 7 



SECTION II. 

What, then, is Confidence in Christ, or Sav- 
ing Faith ? 15 



SECTION III. 
Faith Founded on Evidence 23 



SECTION IV. 

Three Views of Faith — the Komish, the 
Rationalistic, the Christian 34 



SECTION V. 

The Testimony of God 44 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

SECTION VI. 

PAGE 

Faith not a Mere Act, but a Life 55 

SECTION VII. 
Faith the Differentia of Christian Life . 67 

SECTION VIII. 
Faith's Warrant is God's Word 73 

SECTION IX. 
The Assurance of Faith 77 

SECTION X. 
The Growth of Faith 86 

SECTION XI. 
The Trials of Faith 93 



CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 



SECTION I. 

THE IMPOKTANCE OF FAITH. 

rflHE word of God attaches the utmost pos- 
-*- sible importance to faith, even going so 
far as to say, " Without faith it is impossible 
to please him," and " Whatsoever is not of 
faith is sin." 

Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be a 
Teacher sent from God, commanded his serv- 
ants to proclaim to the world, "He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but 
he that believeth not shall be damned." Nay, 
even more than this : he said to Nicodemus, 
" He that believeth not is condemned already, 
because he hath not believed in the name of 

7 



8 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

the only-begotten Son of God." The apostle 
John points out the moral necessity for the 
unbeliever's damnation when he affirms that 
" he that believeth not God hath made him a 
liar." 

Throughout every portion of the Scriptures 
the importance of faith is insisted upon with 
emphasis, and even with vehemence. Moses 
upbraids the children of Israel because they did 
not believe the promises of the Lord their God 
who had brought them up out of the land of 
Egypt ; prophet after prophet complains that 
the people to whom he was sent would not 
believe the message of the Lord uttered by 
his lips ; Jesus tells the Jews that if they had 
believed Moses they would also have believed 
him ; the apostles take up the sad lamenta- 
tion and bewail the unbelief of those to 
whom they bore the glad tidings. 

The painful feet is patent on every page of 
human history that the great mass of man- 
kind has never believed what God the Lord 
has spoken. It is simply impossible for one 



THE IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 9 

who by his practical unbelief in what God 
says makes or treats him as a liar to find 
eternal blessedness in his presence; for how 
can two walk together, much less dwell to- 
gether, except they be agreed? So long as 
any man lacks confidence in God he will not 
and cannot desire God's companionship ; and 
companionship with Christ is the blessedness 
and glory of the Christian's heaven. 

It is a common saying that " it makes no 
difference what a man believes provided his 
life is right ;" but the fact is that men's beliefs 
control and direct their lives. It is a simple 
impossibility for a man's life to be right when 
his beliefs are all wrong. " Truth is in order 
to godliness," and belief of the truth is the 
only sure guide into righteousness. Our be- 
liefs exert an absolutely controlling influence 
upon our lives ; they give direction and color 
to all of our mental activities and moral 
actions. He w T ho does not believe in the 
existence of God will never engage in any 
act of piety or devotion toward a supreme 



10 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

Being, because the very act of worship in- 
volves a mental and moral absurdity. The 
Thug who believes that murder is right will 
be sure to act out his belief, and to kill his 
victim whenever the occasion offers; the 
Christian who believes it to be his highest 
duty to obey the commands of God will daily 
endeavor to live up to his convictions; the 
man who believes that falsehood is equally 
as good as the truth will prove to be an 
habitual liar. 

Nothing can be more pernicious than the 
doctrine that man is not responsible for his 
belief. If he is not responsible for what he 
believes, he is not responsible for anything, 
for without moral opinions he is not a moral 
agent; and the morality of his actions de- 
pends upon his beliefs and desires, from 
which flows all of his conduct. 

The Bible, therefore, is in perfect accord 
with human experience and history when it 
presses the paramount importance of faith. 
While men constantly complain of the justice 



THE IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 11 

of God when he asserts that the unbeliever 
shall be damned, it remains eternally true that 
if men refuse to believe God their salvation is 
impossible. The question is frequently and 
flippantly asked, "Do you believe that God 
will damn me in hell for ever because I do 
not believe in Jesus Christ ?" God has said, 
" He that believeth not shall be damned f 
and it is far wiser and safer to believe that 
what God says is true than to believe that he 
is guilty of falsehood. So far as I can see, 
the damnation of the unbeliever is simply in- 
evitable. It is no arbitrary caprice on the 
part of God that makes faith in his Son Jesus 
Christ a condition of eternal life : " He that 
hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not 
the Son of God hath not life." It is well 
for men to understand that they cannot with 
safety to their own souls trifle with eternal 
truth. Whatever else God may be, he must 
be true. If God should but once fail to be 
true to his word, and thus deceive us, our 
confidence in him would be gone, and gone 



12 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

for ever. How dark and dreary and des- 
perate the condition of that man who has lost 
confidence in God ! For him there is noth- 
ing but the blackness of darkness. Far less 
pitiable is the fate of the mariner adrift 
on mid-ocean without chart or compass or 
rudder. 

The attitude of the soul toward God is 
decisive of its eternal destiny, and no feature 
of the life beyond the grave is more strongly 
marked than the implicit confidence reposed 
in God by all holy angels and saints and 
the scornful unbelief of all demons and lost 
spirits. Heaven is characterized by faith ; 
hell, by distrust of God. Companionship 
with Christ and all holy beings is the bless- 
edness and the joy of heaven, and without 
confidence in Christ companionship with him 
must remain an eternal impossibility. He 
that believeth not must be damned ; to this 
result the whole moral being of God is irre- 
vocably pledged. 

Does any man ask, " Is it possible that so 



THE IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 13 

slight a circumstance as the presence or the 
absence of faith should make such world- 
wide and eternal differences in human des- 
tiny ?" Let him look around and ask what 
makes such infinite differences in conduct and 
character here on earth ; and if candid, he 
will confess that they are due to the beliefs 
of men. The last stage of moral degrada- 
tion is reached when men believe that dark- 
ness is light, that evil is good, that the devil 
is God : and this belief, w T herever it prevails, 
creates a hell on earth. Let no man be de- 
ceived : " God is not mocked ; whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap." Aliena- 
tion from God, distrust of him and unbelief 
in his word will inevitably bring forth a har- 
vest of hopeless misery. The damnation of 
unbelief is no less certain than the hopeless- 
ness of godlessoess. Men without God are 
also without hope, and men without faith are 
also without life and blessedness. If the pict- 
ure is dark and dreadful, unbelief in God 
made it so. No being in this universe with 



14 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

confidence in God is or can be wretched : " He 
that believeth hath eternal life." 

In this age of prevalent and growing un- 
belief in the threatenings and the promises 
of God the importance of implicit confidence 
in his word cannot be too urgently insisted 
upon or emphasized. Without confidence in 
God it is impossible to please him. 

Few persons can be found w r ho will affirm 
that these truths are not taught in the word 
of God, but the moment the duty of believ- 
ing is pressed upon them they take refuge in 
the plea that they do not and cannot under- 
stand what is meant by confidence in Christ, 
by faith in God. They do understand what 
is meant by confidence in a fellow-man, but 
they cannot comprehend what is meant by 
confidence in Christ. They imagine that 
some new faculty is required for the exercise 
of saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and that without this faculty they cannot 
believe. 



SECTION II. 

WHAT, THEN, IS CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST, OR 
SAVING FAITH? 

ONE of the clearest definitions of faith is 
that given by the Eev. Dr. F. L. Patton 
in a paper read by him at the First Presby- 
terian Council at Edinburgh : " Faith is per- 
suasion of the truth. When it terminates on 
propositions, we call it assent ; when on per- 
sons, trust." Dr. Archibald Alexander says, 
" Faith is a belief of the truth." Dr. Dwight 
calls it " an act of trust or confidence." 

It will aid us in this inquiry to recognize 
and insist upon the fact that every act or 
exercise of faith is essentially the same in 
nature. The differences in acts of faith are 
not in the acts themselves, but in the subject- 
matter of the truths presented as objects of 
faith. Confidence in God, considered as an 

15 



16 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

exercise of the soul, differs in no essential 
element from confidence in a fellow-man : 
the difference is not in the exercise or the 
act of faith, but in the object of the faith. 
In the one case it is God ; in the other, it is 
man. The belief that fire will burn, consid- 
ered as a subjective exercise of the soul, is in 
no wise different from the belief that Jesus 
is the Christ, the Son of the living God. In 
either case a man is persuaded of the truth on 
its own proper evidence. In the one case the 
evidence is derived from personal experience ; 
in the other, from testimony. There is not one 
set of faculties whereby men are persuaded of 
natural truths, and another and a different set 
of faculties whereby they are persuaded of 
supernatural or divine truths ; it is the same 
faculty that lays hold of every truth, that 
puts forth every act of confidence. Man in 
his personality is a unit, and for all purposes 
this personality is perfect. It is not a part 
of him, but the whole man, that believes, in 
every act of faith ; it is not one faculty that 



WHAT IS SAVING FAITH? 17 

exercises confidence in man, and a different 
faculty that exercises confidence in God: in 
both cases it is the man who believes, con- 
fides, trusts. 

Of all human acts, faith is one of the sim- 
plest and the most common, nor in its every- 
day use do men find any difficulty in com- 
prehending it. Human life and all of man's 
activities, occupations and relationships are 
founded upon and rest securely on faith. 
Impelled by hunger, men partake of the food 
which God has provided, believing that it 
will sustain and nourish life; they are per- 
suaded of this truth, and they act upon this 
belief. The husbandman believes in the uni- 
formity of nature — that while the earth re- 
maineth seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, 
summer and winter and day and night shall 
not cease ; and on this belief or confidence he 
acts : he fallows the ground, sows the seed 
and gathers the harvest. He is persuaded of 
a natural truth upon its own appropriate and 
sufficient evidence, and on this faith he acts 

2 



18 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

in sowing and in reaping. The seamen who 
do business on the great deep launch forth 
in the confident belief that water will float 
the vessel, and that wind and tide and steam 
will bring them to their desired haven. Here, 
there is persuasion of the truth, with an act 
of trust in consequence of the persuasion. 

Nearly all business transactions rest upon 
faith and are conducted upon mutual confi- 
dence between man and man. Men deposit 
money in banks, receive and give notes, drafts 
and checks, professional men render services, 
merchants sell their wares, mechanics do 
work, and all these manifold activities and 
transactions have their foundation in the con- 
fidence reposed by man in his fellow-men. 
In fact, it is this confidence that holds society 
together and makes human existence on the 
earth possible and endurable. Destroy this 
confidence, and a state far worse than anarchy 
would at once ensue. No difficulty is ex- 
perienced as to what is meant in these con- 
nections by the words " confidence," " faith," 



WHAT IS SAVING FAITH? 19 

" trust ;" the act designated by these is simple 
and is easily understood. 

Yet the moment we speak of confidence, 
trust in God, men at once declare their in- 
ability to comprehend the meaning of this 
faith. But the faith in its essence as a 
human act is the same; the personal object is 
different. In the one case it is our fellow- 
man ; in the other, it is God. If a man is 
able to know what it is to have confidence in 
a fellow-mortal, surely he should have no 
difficulty in knowing what confidence in God 
means. 

Let me use an illustration from every-day 
life — one employed with signal power by Dr. 
Mark Hopkins in an article in the Princeton 
Review on " Faith/' We are in the habit of 
saying, " Yes, I know Dr. A. ; he is my 
family physician, in whom I have every con- 
fidence. I trust myself and all the members 
of my family to his care and skill with im- 
plicit confidence." Let us analyze this case, 
for in it we have a most excellent illustration 



20 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

of saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as 
the great Physician of souls. 

Dr. A. presents himself to the public as a 
physician to minister to the ills and the sick- 
nesses of his fellow-mortals. This is his pro- 
fession, his avocation, his business, and in this 
character he is known to the public. In 
some way, either by general reputation or by 
the testimony of friends or by personal obser- 
vation, I have acquired knowledge of him, 
and am persuaded that he is wise, skillful and 
reliable, and so I trust myself and my family 
to his care. I have confidence in him in the 
character in which he presents himself to me. 
Here there is nothing strange, mysterious or 
incomprehensible; a child can understand 
what I mean by confidence in my physician. 

So in the case of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 
the great Physician. In some way — either 
by general reputation or by the testimony of 
friends who have tried him or by the script- 
ures of the Old and New Testaments — I 
have obtained knowledge of him as a wise, 



WHAT IS SAVING FAITH? 21 

kind and skillful Physician. True, he is in 
heaven and I cannot see him with my mortal 
eyes, but he is a living Person, and he pre- 
sents himself to me as a Healer and a Saviour. 
Faith is personal confidence in him in the 
character in which he is presented to me in 
the Scriptures. The moment I trust myself 
to him I have exercised saving faith. If I 
am persuaded of the truth of the historic 
propositions concerning him, I have faith, in 
the sense of " assent " to the propositions ; if 
I confide in him as a personal Saviour, then I 
have saving faith. "Assent" to truths con- 
cerning him is different from the committal 
of one's self to him. Trust in him is differ- 
ent from belief of statements concerning him : 
"With the heart man believeth unto right- 
eousness, and with the mouth confession is 
made unto salvation." All beliefs about 
Christ come short of salvation until the man 
commits himself with confiding trust to him. 
Many persons seem to exercise faith in Christ 
as regards others, but do not exercise it as 



22 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

regards themselves: they believe that he 
saves others, but do not believe that he is 
their Saviour; they believe what is said 
about him in the sacred Scriptures, but they 
do not commit themselves to him. 

They believe that Dr. A. is a good physi- 
cian, but have never placed themselves under 
his care. How many, alas ! never place 
themselves in the hands and under the care 
of the great Physician Christ Jesus ! 

Faith is impossible without knowledge : 
" How shall they believe in him of whom they 
have not heard? So then faith cometh by 
hearing, and hearing by the word of God." 
There can be no " assent " to any proposition 
unless and until it has been presented to, 
and apprehended by, the mind ; there can be 
no trust in a person until something is known 
of that person and of the character in which 
he is presented to us for our confidence. Any 
truth presented to man as a proper object of 
faith must be supported by its own appro- 
priate and sufficient evidence. 



SECTION III. 

FAITH FOUNDED ON EVIDENCE. 

f\F course the word "testimony" is not 
" used here in the narrow sense in which it 
is employed to designate evidence in court, 
nor even in the wider, but still limited, sense 
in which it denotes some declaration of our 
fellow-men, but in the general sense of evi- 
dence. Every truth and all truth has its own 
proper and sufficient evidence, and without 
evidence men cannot believe. Whatever pre- 
sents itself to me for my belief must com- 
mend itself by appropriate evidence. 

In every sphere or realm of knowledge 
the truths which are the proper objects of 
belief are authenticated to us by appropriate 
testimony. In the sphere of the senses truths 
belonging to this region are authenticated to 

23 



24 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

men by the testimony of the organs of sen- 
sation. You believe that a rose is fragrant, 
that ice is cold, that iron is hard, that matter 
is divisible, that fire will burn, that honey is 
sweet, and you believe these truths upon 
the testimony of your bodily organs, the 
senses. Through these organs of sensation, 
either mediately or immediately, you have 
knowledge of an external world and of its 
various properties. This knowledge is pre- 
sented to and established by the testimony of 
the organs of taste, touch, smell, hearing and 
sight. Man never asks, nor does he need, 
any other evidence than that given by his 
senses to persuade him of the truths that 
belong to this realm or department of knowl- 
edge. 

When I pass beyond the bounds of my 
own personal observation, I am dependent for 
knowledge upon the testimony of my fellow- 
men. There are thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of truths and facts of which I have no 
personal knowledge, and yet I receive them 



FAITH FOUNDED ON EVIDENCE. 25 

upon the testimony of others. I have never seen 
London Bridge, nor St. Peter's at Kome, nor 
the Pyramid of Gizeh, nor the Taj Mahal, nor 
Mount Everest, and yet I am fully persuaded 
that these objects exist; and this belief is 
founded upon human testimony. I have 
never seen Lake Tanganyika, nor the Dead 
Sea, nor the river Livingstone, and yet I am 
as certain of their existence as if I had sailed 
over or bathed in them ; and this assurance is 
based upon the words of others. 

So of all that vast domain of knowledge 
embraced in the history of the past : we are 
wholly dependent upon the evidence left on 
record by our fellow-men. No living man, 
by leagues of space and centuries of time, 
ever saw or heard Moses, or David, or Nebu- 
chadnezzar, or Cyrus, or Alexander, or Csesar, 
or Constantine, or Luther, or Wyckliffe, or 
Shakespeare, or Bunyan, and yet we believe 
that Moses was Israel's leader and that David 
was Jesse's son and king at Hebron, that 
Nebuchadnezzar built great Babylon, that 



26 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

Cyrus was a noble emperor, that Alexander 
conquered the larger portion of the known 
world, that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, that 
Constantine professed and established the 
Christian religion in the Roman empire, that 
Luther was the great Reformer, that Wyck- 
liffe gave the first complete English Bible 
to the England of his day, that Shakespeare 
wrote Macbeth and that John Bunyan gave to 
the world the Pilgrim's Progress. Of these, 
and of all the facts of the past, we have no 
personal knowledge, no observation, no ex- 
perience, but must rely absolutely upon the 
testimony of others. Yet what man of even 
a minimum amount of sense fails to receive 
and to rest with confidence upon these truths 
authenticated to him by appropriate and suf- 
ficient evidence ? In this great department of 
knowledge faith cometh by hearing and hear- 
ing by the word of men, and on their testi- 
mony we rest with assured confidence. We 
assent to the propositions presented upon suf- 
ficient evidence for our belief. 



FAITH FOUNDED ON EVIDENCE. 27 

But there is another department of knowl- 
edge — a sphere or realm above that of the 
organs of sensation, beyond that of human 
experience : there is a world of which our 
senses can give no information, concerning 
which our fellow-men can bear no testimony, 
because unto this realm the senses do not 
reach, into this our fellow-mortals cannot 
enter ; or if they enter, they cannot return to 
bear witness. I allude to that immense sphere 
or realm above nature to which we give the 
name of supernatural. What do we know or 
believe concerning that world w T hich is not 
bounded by earthly times and earthly spaces ? 
How can we know anything of that realm 
which lies beyond personal sensation or hu- 
man observation and testimony? 

The would-be wise man who now assumes 
the name of agnostic, and who modestly and 
meekly limits human knowledge to what he 
know r s, says at once, " I do not, and I cannot, 
know anything whatever of the supernatural 
— of any realm beyond the range of my 



28 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

senses, or perhaps the senses of others : my 
beliefs and knowledge are limited entirely to 
the present sphere of nature." The Chris- 
tian thanks God that there are faith in and 
knowledge of worlds and beings above and 
beyond the limitations of earth and time and 
sense, and this faith is founded upon the testi- 
mony of that God who will not, and who can- 
not, deceive his creatures. If we believe the 
testimony of men as to natural things, ought 
we not to believe the testimony of God as to 
supernatural things ? If we believe the tes- 
timony of Livingstone and Stanley concern- 
ing the lakes, rivers, products and people of 
Africa, shall we not also receive the testimony 
of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit 
concerning the river and the tree of life in 
the paradise regained, and concerning the 
ranks and orders of the holy beings who 
people the heavenly realms? Shall I be- 
lieve Stanley when he tells me of the bloody 
and brutal savages of Uregga and Manyema, 
and refuse to believe God when he tells me of 



FAITH FOUNDED ON EVIDENCE. 29 

the demons in hell or the angels and saints in 
heaven ? 

I am called upon by every principle of the 
critical and scientific method to accept the 
testimony of competent and credible human 
witnesses concerning all things belonging to 
the entire sphere of human observation ; so 
also I am called upon by the very same prin- 
ciples to accept the testimony of competent 
and credible supernatural and divine witnesses 
concerning things that pertain to the super- 
natural sphere. If I am bound to believe 
the testimony of travelers concerning other 
lands and peoples that I never saw, I am also 
bound to believe angels, Jesus and the Holy 
Spirit when they testify as to other worlds and 
intelligences. And the highest and wisest 
and most ennobling of all man's beliefs is his 
faith in the testimony of God. If we receive 
the witness of men, the witness of God is 
greater. If there is a God worthy of man's 
worship, then he must possess in an infinite 
number and degree all possible perfections, 



30 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

and among them knowledge and truthfulness, 
and hence he must of necessity be the most 
competent and credible of all witnesses, hu- 
man or divine. Therefore, to accept the 
testimony of God is to have the highest of 
all possible evidence ; not to believe what God 
says is no less a folly than a sin. This faith 
is the substance of things hoped for, the evi- 
dence of things not seen. 

Faith in its largest Bible use is the cordial 
reception by man of every word spoken by 
God in the scriptures of the Old and the New 
Testament : " By faith a Christian believeth 
to be true whatsoever is revealed in the word, 
upon the authority of God himself speaking 
therein." Whether the Bible contains the 
record of what God has spoken does not 
belong to this present discussion. To believe 
what God says of his Son Christ Jesus and to 
trust Jesus the Lord as a personal Saviour is 
to possess and exercise saving faith. Confi- 
dence in a person differs from assent to a 
proposition. 



FAITH FOUNDED ON EVIDENCE. 31 

Some men believe a part, but not the whole, 
of God's testimony as contained in his word ; 
they believe certain portions of what he has 
revealed, and other portions they reject; they 
accept some of his statements, but reject 
others; they receive some of the truths 
taught by Jesus Christ, but refuse to receive 
others. One may believe that "the worlds 
were framed by the word of God," and at the 
same time he may deny that the finally im- 
penitent will be banished from the presence 
of God ; one may believe that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God, and at the same time 
deny that "he that believeth not shall be 
damned ; " one may believe what is said of 
our Lord in the Scriptures, and yet not con- 
fide in him for personal salvation. 

The Bible everywhere enjoins belief in 
God's testimony and confidence in his Son 
our Saviour as the immediate and urgent duty 
of every human being, and it declares with 
equal emphasis that unbelief in Christ is a 
heinous sin. It teaches that unbelief in God 



32 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

is not a guiltless infirmity, but a damnable 
offence. For unbelief by its acts says to God, 
" I do not believe what you say, and I will 
not trust your Son." This is deep and des- 
perate iniquity: it treats God as a liar, it 
destroys all confidence between man and his 
Maker, it is the prelude and the preparation 
for hell : " He that believeth not shall be 
damned." Of all the fearful sights in this 
ruined world, none thrills the soul with more 
unutterable horror than to see a mortal man 
stand in the presence of his Maker and hear 
him say to God, " I do not believe what you 
say, and I will not trust in your Son." 

Dr. Mark Hopkins says, "Faith is confi- 
dence in a personal being." Now, if we say 
to a fellow-man — a personal being — " I have 
no confidence in you," we grossly insult him 
and render impossible all kindly and friendly 
intercourse with him. But God is also a 
" personal being ; " and if men show by words 
or actions that they have no confidence in 
him, they thereby grievously dishonor him 



FAITH FOUNDED ON EVIDENCE. 33 

and render companionship and loving com- 
munion with him impossible. Unbelief in 
Jesus Christ — God manifest in the flesh — is 
the most aggravated form of dishonor done to 
God as a personal being, and continued unbe- 
lief must of necessity for ever exclude the sin- 
ner from the blessed and loving presence of 
God. He that believeth not, not only shall be, 
but ought to be, damned ; and on this ground 
the condemnation of the wicked is no arbi- 
trary and capricious decree of God, but a 
natural and inevitable necessity. Any sin, 
however heinous, may be pardoned through 
the blood and righteousness of the Son of 
God, but even in the infinite grace of God 
there is no provision made to save the willful 
and persistent unbeliever in the Lord Jesus 
Christ. If men do not have confidence in 
Christ, how is it possible for him to be their 
Saviour ? " If any man love not the Lord 
Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema. Maran 
atha." 

3 



SECTION IV. 



RATIONALISTIC, THE CHRISTIAN. 

rpHE Romish view is that God has ap- 
pointed the Church of Rome his infallible 
visible representative among men, and that all 
men everywhere are bound to believe what 
the Church teaches upon her authority as an 
infallible teacher. According to this theory, 
the dogma of Church authority is the founda- 
tion of faith : men must believe what the 
Church teaches, and simply because the 
Church teaches it. Beyond and above the 
authority of the Church there is no tribunal 
to which the soul can appeal. The Church 
affirms: I must believe; the Church com- 
mands : I must obey. The teachings of the 
Church of Rome may flatly contradict the 

34 



THREE VIEWS OP FAITH. 35 

testimony of my senses, may contradict the 
judgment of my reason, may contradict all 
my conclusions concerning truths of every 
kind, but I must renounce all these testimo- 
nies and conclusions at the command of this 
Church, and accept her dogmas as ultimate 
infallible truth simply and solely upon her 
decree. 

The authority of the Church is to dominate 
the senses, intellect, conscience and will of 
men. After the priest has pronounced the 
words of consecration and changed the little 
piece of bread — the wafer — into the "body 
and Godhead of Christ," it is in vain that my 
senses as before testify that the bread is still 
bread, that the wafer looks like bread, smells 
like bread, tastes like bread, and all this in 
that sphere or realm where only the senses 
have a right to be heard : Rome stands with 
her dogmas of authority, and says, " This 
wafer is no longer bread : it has been changed 
into the body, blood and divinity of our 
Lord, into a iotum Christum — a whole Christ: 



36 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

you must reject the testimony of your senses 
and believe what the Church says." 

Thousands of intelligent Romanists who 
are entitled to credence profess to believe this 
upon the authority of the Church, and it is 
at least a most interesting mental problem 
whether they really do believe this dogma of 
the Church or the testimony of their senses. 
Can they possibly believe that to be a God 
which their senses declare to be only bread ? 
Is it possible for man to believe that to be 
true which thus so directly contradicts the 
evidence of his senses — the very organs, and 
the only organs, whereby he can obtain any 
knowledge whatever of the properties of 
bread? Do men acquire knowledge of the 
properties of bread through the organs of 
taste, smell, sight and touch, or through the 
teachings of an infallible Church? 

It must be evident to every intelligent and 
candid person that the mere authority of the 
so-called Church is no sufficient and firm 
foundation upon which to erect any structure 



THREE VIEWS OP FAITH. 37 

of faith ; yet this is the stone on which in 
great part is laid the faith of the papal hier- 
archy and its subjects. From the dogma of 
Church authority there may grow a gigantic 
and baleful superstition, but never an intelli- 
gent faith ; and the blind and unquestioning 
belief and obedience of the slaves of the 
papacy are as far removed from intelligent 
Christian faith as are the blasphemous utter- 
ances of the most avowed and arrant infidel. 
" Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by 
the word of God." A system that starts thus 
with the denial of the truthfulness of the 
testimony of our senses and reason in their 
proper sphere is unworthy of the confidence 
of mankind and deserves the reprobation of 
the race. 

2. The Rationalistic View. — Rationalism 
founds faith entirely on human reason. Its 
fundamental dogma is, "Not merely that 
which contradicts human reason, but whatever 
is above or beyond that reason — whatever is 
insoluble by reason — is incredible." Chris- 



38 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

tianity would not dissent if rationalism con- 
tented itself with the affirmation that what- 
ever contradicts the testimony of reason is 
incredible, for it is the perfection of folly to 
suppose that the reason of man can accept 
as true that which he knows to be false. 
If a man said that he believed a circle 
was square or that an effect had no pro- 
ducing cause, this would be equivalent to 
saying that his reason accepted as true what 
his reason knew to be not only absurd, but 
impossible. 

But the objection is at hand, " Does not 
this admission with one fell stroke destroy all 
faith in the vital doctrines of the Christian 
religion ?" Are not many of the truths of 
the Bible contradictory of human reason ? 
And does not infidelity declare against these 
doctrines because of their conflict with reason ? 
The mode of the divine existence- — three sub- 
sistences in one essence — the incarnation of 
the Son of God, the coexistence of divine 
efficiency and human freedom, the immuta- 



THKEE VIEWS OF FAITH. 39 

bility of God and the efficacy of prayer, — 
are not these and their correlated truths in 
direct conflict with and in contradiction of 
human reason ? At this point let the distinc- 
tion between that which contradicts reason and 
that which is above reason be clearly and care- 
fully noted : a truth may be above reason, and 
yet not contradict reason. I may be unable 
to explain the mode of the divine existence, 
and yet when it is revealed to me as a fact 
upon competent and credible evidence there is 
nothing that contradicts the testimony of my 
reason, though there is much that is above 
and beyond my highest powers of reason. So 
I may be unable to originate the idea of the 
Word made flesh ; but when that life is man- 
ifested and men see and hear and handle the 
incarnate Son of God, I can accept their tes- 
timony and believe that Jesus of Nazareth is 
the Christ, the Son of God. I may be unable 
to solve the problem of the coexistence of 
divine purpose and efficiency with human free- 
dom and responsibility ; but when both truths 



40 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

are established upon separate and sufficient evi- 
dence, my reason is bound to accept them. In 
these cases there is something above, but noth- 
ing contradictory of, my reason. It by no 
means follows that what is insoluble by reason 
is in conflict with and contradiction of human 
reason : insolubility and contradiction are not 
synonymous terms. Every man believes 
upon sufficient evidence many things that he 
cannot comprehend. 

Now, rationalism denies the reality of 
knowledge or faith outside the limited sphere 
of nature, reason and human experience. 
Not content with affirming as regards this 
sphere that whatever contradicts reason is 
incredible, it also denies the possibility of 
certain knowledge of anything outside this 
realm. In short, it denies the possibility of 
God and a supranatural world. 

The real point at issue is not whether it 
is possible to believe that which contradicts 
reason, but whether reason can and ought to 
accept truths above and beyond itself upon 



THREE VIEWS OF FAITH. 41 

the testimony of supranatural beings. The 
existence of God, of angels and of demons, 
the Godhead of Jesus, the judgment of the 
last day, heaven and hell, are facts that lie 
beyond the finite realm — the realm of nature, 
time and sense — but we accept them as facts 
upon adequate evidence; nor do they contra- 
dict anything that we know or believe upon 
the testimony of our senses or reason. 

3. The Christian and common-sense view 
proceeds upon the fundamental fact that all 
rational faith must rest upon sufficient evi- 
dence, that man believes nothing, and can 
believe nothing, that is not authenticated to 
him by its own appropriate and sufficient 
evidence. Whoever accepts a fact in the 
sphere of the senses believes upon the testi- 
mony of his organs of sensation. If the fact 
is in the realm of consciousness, the man 
believes upon the testimony of his conscious- 
ness ; if the fact is in the domain of history, 
he believes upon the testimony of competent 
and credible witnesses ; if the fact is in the 



42 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

sphere of the supranatural, then he believes 
upon the testimony of supranatural beings. 
This view subjects the faith of the Christian 
to every ascertained and accepted law of 
scientific knowledge and rational belief. It 
does not ask from its adherents irrational 
superstition or blind credulity; it demands 
from no one faith in that which contradicts 
all or any of the established laws of human 
thought. It always presents evidence before 
it requires faith, and is ready to give to every 
man a reason for what it believes. With- 
out knowledge and evidence there cannot be 
faith. 

According to this view, in the sphere of 
the senses man believes upon the evidence 
of sensation ; in the sphere of consciousness, 
upon the evidence of consciousness; in the 
sphere of the human, upon the evidence of 
his fellow-mortal; in the sphere of the divine, 
upon the testimony of God. 

Christianity rejects with abhorrence the 
dogma of ecclesiastical authority, and denies 



THREE VIEWS OF FAITH. 43 

that man can and must believe the unbeliev- 
able upon the decree of any pope, council, 
synod or assembly. It holds fast to the word 
of the Lord that faith cometh by hearing — 
by hearing appropriate, competent and cred- 
ible testimony ; that it comes in this way, and 
cannot possibly come in any other way. It 
rejects the doctrine that all faith is founded 
solely in and on human reason ; it rejects the 
assertion that knowledge and belief are limited 
to the things of earth and sense, and that 
man's mind cannot believe anything that his 
mind cannot fully comprehend and solve; it 
affirms potency outside of man and matter; 
and believes in the reality of knowledge and 
faith respecting objects in the realm above 
and beyond the finite. 



SECTION V. 

THE TESTIMONY OF GOD. 

TT7E are thus brought face to face with the 
* ' questions, " Has God ever spoken to 
man ? Has he ever in words revealed him- 
self and his will to mortals ? Is there any- 
where on earth in the possession of men any 
testimony of God?" It does not fall within 
the scope of this work to discuss these ques- 
tions ; suffice it to say that the great majority 
of those who have investigated the subject of 
the genuineness and authenticity of the books 
of the sacred Scriptures express themselves 
as abundantly satisfied on these points. If 
men receive human testimony as to the au- 
thenticity of any books, then it is confidently 
asserted that the evidence in favor of the 
books of the Bible is far more abundant both 



THE TESTIMONY OF GOD. 45 

in kind and in degree than that in behalf 
of any other books on earth ; if any works 
among men can be authentic, these must be. 

Whatever these books may or may not be, 
they do at least contain a large and most im- 
portant mass of human testimony on subjects 
of the most vital interest to man ? If these 
books are genuine and authentic — as nearly 
all educated and candid men admit — then we 
are called to consider the testimony handed 
down to us by Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, 
Daniel, Matthew, Luke, John and Paul con- 
cerning what God said and did. If the 
things alleged to have occurred did actually 
transpire in the past, then the only possible 
method by w T hich we of the present can have 
knowledge of them is upon the testimony of 
men who lived in the past, and who were 
competent and credible witnesses. 

The simple issue here is this : " Can we 
believe the statements made by these men ? 
Can we accept their testimony concerning 
what God said and did? Can w r e believe 



46 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

them when they tell us of what they saw and 
heard and handled of the Word of life?" 
These men present themselves to us in the 
attitude of competent and credible witnesses ; 
and if we accept their testimony and believe 
their statements, then we are transported back 
to the ages in which they lived, and see 
with their eyes, hear with their ears and 
handle with their hands. With them we are 
face to face with God, and see his works and 
hear his words and handle his form. 

I will not insult the intelligence of the 
weakest-minded of mortals by hintiug that 
if the God who made him should draw near 
in human form and speak in audible voice to 
him time and again it would be impossible 
for him to know that God, and so I will not 
insult the intelligence of my readers by 
proving that Moses could know God when 
he spoke face to face with him, or that 
Peter, James and John could know God 
when they saw him, or that Thomas and 
other disciples could know God when they 



THE TESTIMONY OF GOD. 47 

handled him. If man can know anything, 
he can surely know the Father God in whose 
image he was made ; and if God can do any- 
thing, surely he can make himself known to 
his child. If this be not true, then all 
knowledge is impossible and life is a delusion 
and a lie. 

Assuming, then, the reliability of these 
sacred records and the truthfulness of these 
witnesses, we have in our hands the testimony 
of God himself — what he said and what he 
did — and the important practical questions 
are, "Do we believe what God says in his 
word to men? Do we believe God to be 
just what his words and works declare him 
to be? Do we confide in him as thus he 
reveals himself to us?" If we thus believe 
and confide, we have faith. 

The phrase "I believe the Bible" admits 
of two very different constructions. By these 
words, one man may mean that he accepts 
as authentic the Bible records and receives as 
true the testimony of the writers, but he does 



48 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

not intend to say that he believes all that 
God affirms in the word. There are multi- 
tudes who receive the Bible as true without 
believing all that God says ; they accept the 
human, but not the divine, testimony con- 
tained in the Scriptures. 

By the phrase "I believe the Bible " an- 
other man means that he accepts as true what 
the human witnesses testify, and he also re- 
ceives and believes all that God says; he 
accepts both the human and the divine testi- 
mony. A man may believe what the wit- 
nesses and writers say, and yet he may not 
believe what God said to them. Thousands 
of the children of Israel believed that God 
spoke to Moses and others of their prophets ; 
they believed that these prophets reported to 
them the very words of God, and at the same 
time they did not believe the message of the 
Lord as delivered to them by the prophets. 
The illustrations of this fact are so numerous 
and familiar that they need not be cited. 
Even now, there are men who have no doubt 



THE TESTIMONY OF GOD. 49 

that God teaches in his word certain doctrinal 
truths, but they dislike these truths and do 
not hesitate to say that they do not believe 
them, thus refusing to receive the testimony 
of God himself. 

One of my fellow-men may repeat to me 
something that a neighbor has said about me ; 
I may believe that the neighbor did say what 
he is reported to have said, and at the same 
time not believe what the neighbor said. 
Now, if we accept as true the testimony of 
the sacred writers, we are face to face, as they 
were, with God, and the simple point to be 
pressed in this connection is, " Can, and do, 
we believe what God says ?" It is perfectly 
manifest that faith may be more or less com- 
plete ; it may believe all or only part of what 
God says. There are very few persons, if 
any, who at all times in their lives believe all 
that God says. 

As was said, a man may believe part of 
God's testimony, but not all of it. He may 
believe that God does possess some of the 

4 



50 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

attributes that he claims, but that he does not 
possess others equally as important ; he may- 
believe fully in the love of God, but not in 
his retributive justice; he may accept the 
doctrine of the believer's salvation, and at 
the same time reject the statement of the 
unbeliever's damnation; he may receive much 
of what God reveals concerning himself, and 
at the same time have no personal confidence 
in him. 

Faith is perfect when it believes all that 
God says and trusts fully in him, and no 
man has Christian faith until he has personal 
confidence in Christ. The testimony of God 
centres and is summed up in Christ : he is 
the Revealer of God, the way, the truth, 
and the life; and no man cometh unto the 
Father but by him. In short, he is God 
manifest in the flesh, and he that sees and 
knows him sees and knows the Father also. 
The gracious purpose of God in all his won- 
drous testimony recorded in the Scriptures is 
to lead men to accept, to trust ; to have confi- 



THE TESTIMONY OF GOD. 51 

dence in, Christ : " This was written that ye 
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of God," and that ye might have confi- 
dence that Christ is all that he claims to be, 
and that he will do all he promises to do ; 
and unless a man has this he is guilty of the 
sin of unbelief. 

A man desiring to sail for Europe might 
stand upon the pier in New York, and, look- 
ing at one of the magnificent ocean-steamers 
lying in port, would have confidence in her 
seaworthiness, speed and comfort; he might 
also have confidence in the skill and fidelity 
of the captain ; but all this would fail to 
land him in Liverpool : he could not cross 
the ocean until by an act of the will he put 
himself aboard the vessel and confided him- 
self to the care of the captain. So the sinner 
who desires to reach the heavenly port must 
by an act of his own, exercise confidence in 
the great Captain of our salvation and trust 
him for all that is needed to bring him to his 
desired haven. Any faith short of this com- 



52 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

mitment of one's self to the Lord Jesus does 
not save the sinner. 

To believe something else about Christ, or 
to believe something else that Christ has said 
or something else that Christ has promised to 
do for some other person, cannot possibly 
take the place of your personal trust and 
commitment of yourself to him: "With the 
heart man believeth unto righteousness, and 
with the mouth confession is made unto sal- 
vation." 

Dr. Mark Hopkins, in the September num- 
ber of the Princeton Review for 1878, in one 
of the ablest articles ever written on the sub- 
ject of faith, says : 

" Of course the confidence or trust of one 
personal being in another may be of every 
degree, according to the ground of it in the 
person trusted and to the relations in which 
they are placed. Suppose, then, the relation 
to be that of physician and patient, with 
entire confidence on the part of the patient. 
He will then believe what the physician may 



THE TESTIMONY OF GOD. 53 

say, will take any remedy he may prescribe 
and will do whatever he directs. 

"Take, again, the case of a traveler and a 
guide. If the traveler accepts the guide in 
full confidence, the forest may be dense and 
pathless, he may be turned round so that the 
south shall seem to be north and the east 
west ; yet he will move on without faltering. 
So, too, with the man who lends money or 
deposits treasure on the simple word of an- 
other, or perhaps even without a word. 

" In each of these instances it will be seen 
that there was a joint-action of the intellect 
and the will : of the intellect, in a belief in- 
volving some interest requiring action ; and 
of the will, in choice and volition with refer- 
ence to that action. Is, then, the essential 
element of the faith to be found in the action 
of the intellect or of the will ? Of the will, 
certainly — so far, at least, that the action of 
the will cannot be dispensed with and faith 
remain. True, mere belief is sometimes in 
the Bible called faith, but it is dead faith. 



54 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

Even the devils have faith in the sense of 
mere belief. 

" The faith of the Scriptures calls for and 
requires acceptance, commitment and obedi- 
ence, for God does not reveal anything for 
the mere purpose of being believed. 

" To be the faith of the Bible, belief, what- 
ever its origin, must pass on and up into a 
loving obedience to God, so drawing in the 
whole man. 

" Confidence in Christ is faith, and this 
reveals itself in belief of his word, in the 
commitment of ourselves to him and in 
obedience to his commands." 






SECTION VI. 

FAITH NOT A MERE ACT, BUT A LIFE. 

TT is a great mistake to suppose, as many 
-*- do, that faith is a mere act, and that it 
ends once for all with the committal of the 
soul to Christ. The sinner who has once 
trusted Christ will continue to trust him — 
having once confided in him, will continue to 
confide in him. The confidence of the sinner 
in his Saviour ever grows and increases 
in strength and sweetness. This confidence, 
once begotten in the soul by the Holy Spirit, 
abides eternally. 

" The clouds may come and go, 
And storms may sweep the sky ; 
The blood-sealed friendship changes not : 
The cross is ever nigh." 

55 



56 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

The believer finds the Saviour more and 
more worthy of his confidence as the years go 
by. Other friends in whom we trust may fail 
and disappoint and deceive us, but the Christ 
will not, and cannot : he is the same yester- 
day, to-day and for ever. Through time and 
eternity he will never do anything to weaken 
or to destroy that faith which he has origin- 
ated in the human soul ; he is not only the 
Author, but also the Finisher, of our Faith. 

There has been much idle and valueless 
controversy over the questions, "Does faith 
precede repentance, or repentance faith? or 
do both precede or follow regeneration, or, as 
it is sometimes called, conversion or change 
of heart?" 

It would seem to be undeniable that life 
must precede action, and spiritual life must 
exist prior to spiritual activities ; the sinner 
must have spiritual life before he can perform 
spiritual acts. In the order of thought, then, 
the new birth and life must go before the 
forthputting of any spiritual actions, and, 



FAITH NOT A MERE ACT. 57 

since faith and repentance are both spiritual 
acts, they must follow regeneration. But as 
a matter of fact, and not of thought, it seems 
to be impossible to separate the three — regen- 
eration, faith, repentance ; they are simul- 
taneous, synchronous. The moment the sin- 
ner is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, that 
moment he believes, that moment he repents. 
It is useless, therefore, to waste time in dis- 
cussing the order of succession of regenera- 
tion, faith and repentance, w T hen in all actual 
Christian experience there is no succession, 
but simultaneity. 

The prophet Habakkuk says the just — 
i. e. the justified man — shall live by his faith; 
in other words, his faith is his life. The 
apostle Paul declares that believers walk by 
faith, and, giving expression to his own deep- 
est experience in this momentous matter, uses 
these words in his letter to the Galatian 
churches : "I am crucified with Christ ; 
nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me, and the life which I now live 



58 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of 
God, who loved me and gave himself for 
me." These words almost identify his faith 
and his life, and almost identify his life and 
the life of the Son of God. These passages 
certainly prove that faith is not a mere act, 
but is also a life. 

The eleventh chapter of the letter to the 
Hebrews abounds in striking illustrations of 
this truth. The believing saints whose names 
and works are here recorded walked all the 
days of their earthly pilgrimage in the might 
and reality of faith ; this principle guided 
their steps and controlled their lives. If the 
faith could be eliminated from their lives, 
how little would remain ! Through faith 
they subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- 
ness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths 
of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped 
the edge of the sword, from weakness were 
made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to 
flight armies of aliens, received their dead 
raised to life again. 



FAITH NOT A MERE ACT. 59 

The faith of these saints was no one single 
act far back at the commencement of their 
spiritual existence, but a constant, continu- 
ous committal of themselves to God and 
of obedience to his commands. From the 
day that God called Abram out of Ur of the 
Chaldees until the day that the patriarch was 
laid to rest in the cave of Machpelah his faith 
was his very life. So powerful and pervading 
was this principle of faith that it was to these, 
saints throughout their entire earthly pilgrim- 
age, the substance of the things they hoped for, 
the evidence of things they had never seen. 
Faith so guided, colored and controlled their 
hearts and actions that it was their very life : 
the just lives by his faith. 

Is it not true that every man is what he 
believes — not merely that his beliefs regu- 
late his conduct, but that they so regulate and 
control it as to be his life ? Our beliefs give 
motives to all our actions and direct and 
mould our lives : " As a man thinketh in his 
heart, so is he." 



60 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

It is quite popular in these days to speak 
in terms half of pity and half of contempt 
of the old-fashioned folks who attach im- 
portance to an orthodox faith. All such 
persons are sadly behind the times now that 
infidelity, under the specious names of "prog- 
ress " and " free thought/' derides all forms 
of well-established belief as relics of barba- 
rism and superstition. In high places and 
low, out of the pulpit, and sometimes in it, 
it is held as conclusive evidence of clever- 
ness and culture to ridicule the wisdom of the 
past and to sneer at any man who believes 
the well-attested and authenticated dogmas 
of divine truth. Public sentiment exclaims, 
" It makes no difference what a man's faith 
is, so that his life is right; it matters not 
what he believes, provided he does what is 
right." As if it were possible to separate 
faith and conduct, beliefs and acts, principles 
and practices ! All human history proves 
the impossibility of making this separation : 
you cannot divorce a man's conduct from his 



FAITH NOT A MEEE ACT. 61 

beliefs. His life is the natural outcome of 
his creed. 

No matter how good and how upright a 
man's general conduct might be, you would 
not employ him as the confidential clerk of 
an immense business if you knew that it was 
one of his unalterably settled beliefs that it 
was eminently proper and right for a con- 
fidential clerk to make free, for his personal 
use, with the funds of the firm employing 
him. The most liberal free-thinker who scoffs 
at everything like a right faith would hesi- 
tate — for a while, at least — before he em- 
ployed this man as chief clerk. Nay, the 
conviction might possibly get into his head 
— so full of "free thought" — that in this 
one particular case it did make some differ- 
ence what his clerk believed. What general 
of an army would send on duty to a most 
important position a subaltern who should 
gravely inform him that it was one of his 
fundamental and fixed beliefs that it was em- 
inently right and proper for a soldier to desert 



62 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

his post when he was in danger and felt like 
leaving? Few juries or judges would attach 
weight to the testimony of a witness who 
just as he took the oath told them that he 
had no conscientious scruples against perjury 
and did not believe that it was criminal to 
lie. No sensible man w r ould select as his 
partner for life the loveliest of womankind 
who held the doctrines of free love, and who 
did not believe in the binding obligation of 
the seventh commandment. What a man 
believes makes the widest possible difference 
in human conduct, life and destiny. If be- 
lief is wrong, conduct cannot be right. As a 
man belie veth in his heart, so is he ; for in 
the long run he lives out his beliefs. 

The devil is now very busy proclaiming 
and propagating the doctrine, " If a man is 
sincere, it makes no difference what religion 
he professes." According to the " father of 
lies," sincerity, and not truth, is the final and 
infallible test of religion. Not the man who 
has clean hands and a pure heart, who works 



FAITH NOT A MERE ACT. 63 

righteousness and obeys God, but the man 
who is sincere, is acceptable to God and an 
heir of eternal life. According to this satanic 
and popular opinion, if the sincerity of a man 
be sufficiently deep and genuine, then vice is 
virtue, darkness is light, error is truth, hell 
is heaven and the devil is God. The most 
revolting crimes that ever cursed our earth 
were committed by men deeply in earnest 
and thoroughly sincere. The cruelties of the 
Inquisition, the atrocities of Alva in the 
Netherlands, the Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, the assassination of William the Silent, 
the judicial murder of Jesus the Christ, the 
ferocious wars of Islam, the human sacrifices 
of the Druids, the bloody rites of the savages 
of Africa, the cannibalism of the Pacific isl- 
anders, can all be vindicated, justified and 
approved if the sincerity of the actors con- 
stitutes the righteousness of their actions. 

It is more than doubtful if the sincerest 
of all believers in the "sincerity" doctrine 
would say to the " sincere " and conscientious 



64 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

thief who was making off with his watch, 
pocket-book and plate, " Friend, go in peace. 
You are sincere in your belief that it is right 
for you to steal, and I have no business to in- 
terfere with your conscientious convictions." 
He who believes that the sincerity of a wretch 
is the only test of truth and righteousness is 
not far from the road that leads down to the 
lowest depth of mental and moral degrada- 
tion possible to man in this mortal state of 
existence. Beyond any question, men act on 
and act out their beliefs : according to these, 
so are their lives ; hence it is that the word 
of God insists with so much emphasis and 
earnestness on right beliefs and righteous 
principles, even declaring that without faith 
it is impossible to please God. Now, the 
faith of the Christian, so far from being a 
mere transient act, becomes a fixed and abid- 
ing principle of his mental and moral consti- 
tution ; it is a life — a continuous life — outlast- 
ing earth and time and sense. 

We sometimes hear the expression concern- 



FAITH NOT A MERE ACT. 65 

ing the future life that "faith will be lost in 
fruition," and this is true, if limited in its 
application to those things promised the child 
of God as parts of his heritage in the heaven- 
ly realm. When he shall have obtained and 
entered into the possession and enjoyment of 
what has been promised him, and for which, 
in confident faith, he now hopes, then faith as 
to these objects will cease. But faith as a life 
of confidence in God will never end ; through- 
out eternity the finite will exercise faith in 
the Infinite, man will believe his Maker and 
God, the sinner saved by grace will confide in 
the wisdom and love of his Saviour. 

The principle that binds all holy intel- 
ligences in one brotherhood of loving alle- 
giance to God is their profound and implicit 
confidence in him. " Just as gravitation is to 
the material creation its conserving power 
and central force, so this faith is the preserv- 
ing bond of the spiritual universe." If this 
confidence in God should be destroyed or 
cease, there would immediately ensue a con- 

5 



66 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

fusion and an anarchy far more dreadful and 
destructive than those which would follow 
the loss of the law of gravitation from its 
place in the physical creation ; the spiritual 
universe would be in ruins, and would re- 
main in ruins until confidence were restored. 
It is true that in the exercise of almighty 
power God could preserve his throne, but his 
empire would be one of force, not of loving 
confidence and communion; and what God 
wishes in his kingdom is not the fear and 
submission of slaves, but the affection and 
confidence of sons. The time will never 
come when the child's faith in his heavenly 
Father will cease. 



SECTION VII. 

FAITH THE DIFFERENTIA OF CHRISTIAN 
LIFE. 

TF called on to point out the distinguish- 
-*- ing element of that life which is called 
" Christian/' we should answer without hesi- 
tation, "Faith" This differentiates the Chris- 
tian life from all other kinds of life ; this is 
the specific element without which no one is or 
can be a Christian : " He that belie veth hath 
eternal life, and he that believeth not is con- 
demned already." Jesus said to the unbe- 
lieving Jews, " Ye believe not, because ye are 
not of my sheep." 

We are profoundly ignorant of the essence 
of that strange and wonderful phenomenon to 
which we give the name of " life." We can- 
not grasp and hold and analyze it, and yet 

67 



68 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

we can see, examine and understand its mani- 
festations ; and, since these manifestations are 
different in the various forms of living things 
and persons, we say there are different kinds 
of life. There is some element in the life of 
every living thing that differentiates the form 
or kind to which it appertains from all other 
forms or kinds of life. When we speak of 
the nature of any particular species of living 
things or beings, we always have reference 
to this differentiating element, though we 
may be unable to define it. The nature of 
the life of a flower differs from that of an 
animal; the nature of mere animal life differs 
from that of man ; the nature of human life 
differs from that of Christian life ; and that 
element which distinguishes and differentiates 
Christian life from all other forms of life on 
earth is confidence in Christ. 

In all plants there is a vital principle to 
which we give the name of " vegetable life," 
and in all the individuals of this group there 
is sameness of qualities. We give different 



FAITH THE DIFFERENTIA. 69 

names to the various members of this species 
— corn, wheat, rye, barley, sunflower, rose, 
geranium, etc. — but no individual is entitled 
to a place in the group unless it is possessed 
of vegetable life, and that life manifested in 
certain unvarying forms. In this group there 
may be, and there are, widely-differing forms, 
but there is identity or sameness of life, and 
the element common to all the individuals of 
the group is the differentia of the species. 

Just above the vegetable is the animal spe- 
cies, or that group of living beings possessed 
of certain common qualities, all animals 
having an essential identity or sameness of 
qualities proceeding from their nature. 
Here, again, differences are observed, but 
there is identity of qualities. And there is 
some element here that distinguishes the 
animal from the vegetable. There is a 
fundamental difference between the vege- 
table and the animal, between vegetable life 
and animal life. Passing to a still higher 
sphere, we reach rational life. Here the 



70 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

element that differentiates this life is reason, 
and this life differs in certain qualities from 
either vegetable life or animal life. So, again, 
in the still higher realm of spiritual life 
there is a specific quality that distinguishes 
this from all other kinds of life, whether 
vegetable, animal or rational, and this qual- 
ity is faith. All persons possessed of this 
vital principle are believers or Christians 
and have eternal life derived from the 
heavenly Man Christ Jesus, who is a 
quickening Spirit. Whoever is destitute of 
this living principle of faith has no right 
whatever to the name of " believer ; " he 
who has not the Spirit of Christ is none 
of his. Whatever is destitute of the prin- 
ciple of vegetable life is not a vegetable ; 
whatever is destitute of the principle of 
animal life is not an animal ; whoever is 
destitute of the principle of rational life is 
not a rational being ; and whosoever is des- 
titute of the living principle of faith is not 
a Christian. Here confidence in Christ marks 



FAITH THE DIFFERENTIA. 71 

and separates the Christian from all other 
men, and Christian life from all other kinds 
of life. 

However much Christians may resemble 
one another or may differ in certain qualities, 
they all agree, and must agree, in the posses- 
sion of this common principle of faith to 
entitle them to a name and a place in 
that group of individuals to which we give 
the name of " Christian." 

Just as there are various degrees in the 
strength, health and force of all forms of 
vegetable, animal and rational life, so here 
also there are various degrees of power in 
the life of faith; its manifestations differ 
most widely in different individuals of the 
group. As there are great varieties of 
plants, animals and men, so there are many 
varieties of Christians : there are babes in 
Christ, there are carnal Christians, there are 
weak believers, there are full-grown and ma- 
ture disciples; but all these, whether w T ith 
much faith or with little faith, with weak life 



72 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

or with robust life, are Christians. It is not 
the degree of the confidence reposed in Christ, 
it is not the strength or the weakness of the 
faith, but the faith itself, that marks the child 
of God. We say it is wholly unnatural for a 
child not to have faith in his father, but it is 
far more unnatural — yea, it is impossible — 
for a Christian not to have confidence in his 
Eedeemer. 



SECTION VIII. 

faith's warrant is god's word. 

" "PvOES Christ authorize our confidence?" is 
-*-^ a fundamental and most important in- 
quiry. Men sometimes exercise unauthorized 
confidence in their fellow-men, and are sadly 
disappointed. A man may believe from what 
he knows of his friend that he will assist him 
in a certain business transaction, and on the 
strength of that belief may go forward, make 
contracts and incur obligations ; but when he 
calls upon his friend for the expected funds, 
the friend declines to let him have the money. 
The gentleman has no just cause of complaint; 
his friend never authorized him to expect this 
assistance. It is an all-important question, 
therefore, to settle : " Has God authorized my 
confidence?" This question answered, then 
I wish to know to what extent he warrants 

73 



74 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

this confidence and where I shall find this 
warrant. Faith must find its warrant in 
God's word. In his word God reveals 
himself to man, makes promises and places 
himself under obligations to him. Man has 
the right, therefore, to exercise confidence in 
God to the utmost extent authorized in the 
sacred Scriptures. 

If my fellow-man, in whose ability and 
good-will I have confidence, gave me his word 
that he would do certain things for me, I 
should have the right, and it would be my 
duty, to exercise full confidence to the very 
extent of the promises : not to believe his 
word and confide in him would be to distrust 
his veracity and to impeach his integrity. But 
if I made demands upon him without his au- 
thorizing these demands, my conduct would 
be liable to the charge of presumption. 

In his word God has authorized the chil- 
dren of men to confide in him and in his Son 
Jesus Christ. He warrants us, according to 
our needs, to call upon him, and promises 



faith's warrant is god's word. 75 

to supply those needs according to his riches 
in glory by Christ Jesus. 

On a remarkable occasion when our Lord's 
disciples could not cast out a devil he said to 
them, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard- 
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove 
hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; 
and nothing shall be impossible to you." The 
warrant for faith is undoubtedly a very large 
one, and the sin that has so easily beset all 
Christians in all ages has been the sin of un- 
belief. So far as salvation is concerned, every 
one is authorized to trust Christ ; for his own 
promise is, " Him that cometh to me I will 
in no wise cast out." Christians, however, 
often say, " Oh yes ; I believe that God will 
do this for me ;" yet when you ask them why 
they think thus, they can give no intelligent 
reason for their belief. They are unable to 
find anywhere in God's word a warrant for 
their faith ; there is no promise or word of 
God to authorize such confidence. In such a 
case the Christian has been, not believing, but 



76 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

presuming upon God. "Cast thyself down 
from this pinnacle of the temple ; you shall 
not be injured: 'He shall give his angels 
charge over thee, to keep thee; in their 
hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any 
time thou dash thy foot against a stone;'" 
but the answer is, " It is written, Thou shalt 
not tempt the Lord thy God." 

The general rule, and the safe one, is that 
all faith must find its warrant in the written 
word of God. To the utmost extent that 
confidence is thus authorized it will never be 
disappointed : " Whosoever believeth on him 
shall not be ashamed." Christ's command 
to Peter to come to him on the water was a 
sufficient warrant to that disciple to walk 
upon the waves in the fullest confidence that 
they would bear him up, and so long as his 
confidence that Christ was mightier than the 
waves remained unshaken he walked with 
safety. God had authorized this confidence, 
but this does not warrant every Christian to 
walk upon the sea. 



SECTION IX. 

THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 

rnHE assurance of faith is most intimately 
-*- connected with the warrant of faith. If 
I believe the word of God, may I not also 
have certain knowledge that I do believe it ? 
When I confide in my physician, do I know 
that I have confidence in him? When I 
confide in Christ as my spiritual Physician, 
do I know that I thus confide in him ? If a 
person said to you that he believed the sun 
would rise to-morrow morning, would he not 
think it a very strange question if you should 
ask him if he knew that he believed this ? 

There are many who hold the opinion that 
the knowledge of our beliefs cannot be sepa- 
rated from the beliefs themselves — that every 
act of belief by man is attended with the 

77 



78 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

knowledge that he does thus believe. Paul's 
statement on the subject of the assurance of 
faith is this : " I know whom I have believed, 
and am persuaded that he is able to keep that 
which I have committed unto him against 
that day." The apostle John testifies, u We 
know that the Son of God is come, and hath 
given us an understanding that we may know 
him that is true ; and we are in him that is 
true, even in his Son Jesus Christ." The 
apostolic Christians were not strangers to the 
doctrine of the assurance of faith ; they not 
only believed, but they knew that they be- 
lieved — not only trusted Christ, but knew 
that they trusted him. 

It is needless to multiply quotations from 
the Scriptures to prove that it is the privilege 
of the believer to have the assurance of faith, 
to know that he has believed, to know that he 
has confided in the Lord Jesus Christ. Why 
should assured knowledge in the domain of 
Christian experience be thought a thing im- 
possible ? 



THE ASSUEANCE OF FAITH. 79 

The consensus of the faith of the Eeformed 
churches is thus scripturally expressed : "Such 
as truJy believe in the Lord Jesus, and love 
him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all 
good conscience before him, may in this life 
be certainly assured that they are in a state 
of grace. . . . This infallible assurance of 
faith is founded upon the divine truth of the 
promises of salvation, the inward evidence of 
those graces unto which these promises are 
made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption 
witnessing with our spirits that we are the 
children of God." — Confession of Faith, chap, 
xviii. 

So far from this being an extreme statement 
of this doctrine, many of the Reformers held 
and taught " that to believe is to be assured 
of our own personal salvation," "that faith 
and assurance were inseparably connected." 
This doctrine is taught in the Augsburg Con- 
fession and in the Heidelberg Catechism and 
was held by Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin. 
The fact will scarcely be questioned by intel- 



80 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

ligent persons that the times of the greatest 
spirituality in the life of the Church have 
been the occasions when this grace of assur- 
ance was most generally possessed and most 
largely enjoyed. When the fires of perse- 
cution were kindled upon believers, the 
question of their personal relation to their 
Redeemer was to them not a matter of doubt, 
but of certainty ; they were enabled to say, 
" We know whom we have believed." 

Periods of coldness, worldliness and declen- 
sion in the Church have always been charac- 
terized by the absence of this assurance from 
the conscious experience of Christians. In 
all earthly matters men have assured knowl- 
edge, assured belief, assured hopes; surely 
they ought to have the same certainty in rela- 
tion to spiritual and eternal interests. Man 
ought to be as certain that he believes God, as 
he is that he believes his fellow-man. The 
ground of assurance is not in the believer 
himself, but in the sure promise of that God 
who cannot possibly prove faithless to his 



THE ASSUKANCE OF FAITH. 81 

own word. If we believe not, yet he abideth 
faithful ; he cannot deny himself. The cer- 
tainty of any believer's salvation rests, not 
upon himself, but absolutely upon the prom- 
ise of Christ to save him ; and if his salvation 
is perfectly assured in Christ, he can surely 
be certain that it is thus assured. When the 
traveler steps on the steamer, he knows that 
he is on board. When I give my treasures 
in trust to a friend, I know that I confide 
them to his custody. When I commit my 
soul-treasures to Christ, I ought to know 
that I have trusted them to him. 

It is true that many professed Christians 
are perfect strangers to this grace of assurance, 
but we must remember that there are many 
who profess Christ who do not possess him : 
"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, 
Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? 
and in thy name have cast out devils ? and in 
thy name done many wonderful works ? and 
theu will I profess unto them, I never knew 
you." "Not every one that saith unto me, 



82 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." The fact, therefore, that many- 
mere professors who know not Christ and 
never confided in him do not have this as- 
surance is no evidence whatever against the 
truth of the doctrine. Of course it is im- 
possible for them to have the assurance of 
salvation while they are unsaved ; they can- 
not possibly know that they possess that of 
which they really are utterly destitute. 

Again, there are many true believers in our 
Lord who live such unspiritual, worldly and 
inconsistent lives that they fail to realize and 
to enjoy many of the blessed privileges of re- 
demption, and among them this one of assur- 
ance. " If we say that we have fellowship 
with Him and walk in darkness, we lie, 
and do not the truth." The Christian who 
is walking in sin loses fellowship with God, 
and with that he loses the joy of salvation 
and the blessedness of assurance. When he 
is walking in the light, in conscious commu- 
nion with Christ, and only then, can he be 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 83 

assured of his salvation as his present pos- 
session. 

It is sad to see so many Christians walking 
all their days in doubt of their acceptance 
with God through the righteousness of their 
risen Redeemer. The believer who thus 
passes his life in doubt and darkness will 
prove as fruitless a worker in the harvest of 
the Lord, as the farmer who, doubting his 
rightful title to his farm, should spend all of 
his time, not in cultivating the soil, but in 
searching the recorded deeds to his property. 
Our Father in heaven desires the joyous serv- 
ice of his loving children who know that they 
are his children, and who can say from con- 
fiding hearts, "Abba, Father." 

Nor is there, as some think, the slightest 
approach to presumption in the exercise of 
this filial confidence. When the eyes of the 
blind man were opened and he saw the blessed 
light of the sun, was it presumption for him 
to say, " One thing I know, that whereas I 
was blind, now I see; a man that is called 



84 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

Jesus said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, 
and wash : and I went and washed, and I re- 
ceived sight"? 

When the father said of the younger son 
who had come home, " This my son was dead 
and is alive again, he was lost and is found/' 
it was not presumption, but the proper thing 
for the son to do, to accept the ring and robe 
and the name and place of a son, and to say 
that he was a son, not a servant ; anything 
else than this would have been to doubt his 
father's word and to distrust his forgiving 
love. 

Surely it is the farthest possible from pre- 
sumption, when Christ says to the pardoned 
penitent, " Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven 
thee," for that penitent joyfully to obey the 
command and to walk in the assured knowl- 
edge of pardon, acceptance and sonship. As 
the child of an earthly father is assured of that 
father's love, so ought the child of God to be 
always assured of the love of the heavenly 
Father; and if he is walking in cheerful 



THE ASSURANCE OF FAITH. 85 

obedience to the will of God, he cannot be a 
stranger to the assurance of his Father's love. 
The obedient, trustful, loving child is always 
conscious of the father's love. 

It would be an unspeakable blessing to the 
Church of this day could this precious doc- 
trine of assurance have the same prominence 
now that it held in the teachings of the Re- 
formers of the sixteenth century, and that it 
occupies in the inspired word of God. 



SECTION X. 

THE GROWTH OF FAITH. 

"TT7ITH the exception of the eternal life 
' * of God, so far as we have knowledge, 
growth is the law of everything that has life. 
Every living thing not only has the capacity 
for growth, but it grows. The germ, whether of 
grass, flower, herb, tree, animal or man, does 
not, if possessed of life, remain a mere germ, 
but the living power in the germ manifests 
itself, makes itself known, in the various 
forms of life — first the blade, then the ear, 
after that the full corn in the ear. There is 
growth from the very beginning to the full 
maturity of life ; the universal law is, " Where 
there is life there must be growth •" and faith 
as a life in the believer is no exception to 
this law. 



THE GROWTH OF FAITH. 87 

The Christian is a new creature in Christ 
Jesus ; he has a new life from the risen Re- 
deemer, the heavenly Man ; hence he is sub- 
ject to the law of growth, and is exhorted to 
grow in grace and in the knowledge of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He must go 
on to maturity, to the measure of a full-grown 
man : the babe in Christ must, and will, attain 
to manhood in him. 

The apostle Paul, writing to the Christians 
at Corinth, says, " And I, brethren, could not 
speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto 
carnal, even as unto babes in Christ ; I have 
fed you with milk, and not with meat." The 
words " spiritual" and " carnal" are here 
used not as opposites or contradictories, as 
they are in the eighth chapter of Romans, but 
as expressive of different degrees of spiritual- 
ity, for the carnal believer is but a babe in 
Christ when he ought to be a grown man. 

Every one must have observed that there 
are very great differences among Christians — 
differences of graces and gifts, and differences 



88 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

of degrees in these graces and gifts. Nay, 
more, there are great differences in the very 
same Christian at different periods of his life. 
His love, his confidence, his zeal, his devo- 
tion, his spirituality, are not always the same 
in degree or manifestation. Hence it is that 
sincere but thoughtless Christians, in igno- 
rance or forgetfulness of these facts, often pass 
harsh judgments upon their fellow-Christians, 
even going so far as to class them with im- 
penitent believers. Utterly failing to make 
due allowance for differences among Chris- 
tians and for variations of spiritual life at 
different times in the same man, they do not 
hesitate with the utmost confidence and self- 
assertion to denounce as hypocrites those who 
are in deed and in truth their brethren in the 
Lord. If a believer is deficient in certain 
graces, or if in some hour of sore temptation, 
under the assaults of the devil, he falls into 
sin, these censorious persons at once proclaim 
that such a one is not a Christian ; unmindful, 
apparently, of the fact that this rule of judg- 



THE GROWTH OF FAITH. 89 

merit, if applied to the lives of those we know 
were saints, would exclude Noah, Abraham, 
Moses, David and Peter from the blessed 
presence of God in heaven. 

Faith, in its working, most marvelously 
develops the new life, increasing the believer's 
confidence in Christ and making the new man 
strong in the Lord, and enabling him, like a 
tree planted by rivers of water, to bring forth 
all the fruits of the Spirit in due season. The 
believer's confidence in Christ should increase 
from day to day ; as he learns more of his 
blessed Lord he should rely more confi- 
dently on his faithful word. True, he may 
not at all times be conscious of this growth ; 
nevertheless, it is certain that He who has 
begun a good work in him will carry it on 
unto completeness. The trees are not dead 
in the winter, though stripped of foliage ; be- 
neath the surface of the earth the roots are 
striking deeper and growing stronger. So 
with the trees in the garden of the Lord : 
there is growth, though unseen and unnoticed. 



90 CONFIDENCE IN CHBIST. 

This increasing confidence in Christ, this 
growing faith in God, is manifested in the 
lives of all the saints. Nowhere do we find a 
more illustrious exemplification of this than in 
the life of Abraham, the Father of the Faith- 
ful. When the command of God came to 
him, " Get thee out of the country, and from 
thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto 
a land that I will show thee," he " obeyed 
and went out, not knowing whither he went. 
By faith he sojourned in the land of promise 
as in a strange country, dwelling in taber- 
nacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with 
him of the same promise." In all this wan- 
dering his faith in God grew stronger and 
stronger, until at the divine command he 
took his beloved son Isaac, in whom all the 
Messianic hopes and promises centred, and 
prepared to offer him a burnt sacrifice on 
Mount Moriah. Then came the word of 
the Lord and his wondrous testimony to 
the power and manifestation of Abraham's 
faith : " Lay not thine hand upon the lad, 



THE GROWTH OF FAITH. 91 

neither do thou anything unto him; for now 
I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou 
hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, 
from me." His faith had been growing by 
exercise in all the years of his pilgrim-wan- 
derings until it had reached such robust ma- 
turity that it staggered not at any command 
or promise of God, and was fully persuaded 
that God was abundantly able to keep, and 
would fully perform, all his promises. 

As God leads his children along in their 
journey to the better country he wishes to 
have their filial confidence and love, and they 
must learn to walk by faith, not by sight; 
and just in proportion as God's children walk 
in simple faith in their heavenly Father and 
learn more of his tender mercy and loving 
care, the greater will be their confidence in 
him. In no one instance has God ever 
disappointed the confidence of any of his 
children. Almost every one has had some 
noble, generous, large-hearted friend in whom 
he confided, and as the years have gone by, 



92 CONFIDENCE IN CHEIST. 

and that friend has become better known, as 
more of his integrity and courage and tender- 
ness and fidelity and love to man and God 
have been seen, confidence in him has con- 
tinued to grow stronger and stronger. So 
with the Christian and his Saviour. As the 
believer follows on to know the Lord — to 
know him in all the depths and heights of 
his eternal love, and in all the matchless and 
marvelous tenderness of his human sympathy, 
having trusted and tried his Saviour a thou- 
sand times, and having never once found him 
to fail — his confidence becomes rooted as the 
everlasting hills, and no storm of earth nor 
blast from hell can shake it. Then with Paul 
he can say, " I know whom I have believed," 
and "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor 
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of 
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 



SECTION XI. 

THE TRIALS OF FAITH. 

rpHE trials of faith are most intimately and 
directly connected with its growth. The 
apostle Peter says to the elect of God, " That 
the trial of your faith, being much more pre- 
cious than of gold that perisheth, though it 
be tried with fire, might be found unto praise 
and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus 
Christ." The saints, " elect according to the 
foreknowledge of God the Father, through 
sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience 
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ," 
and " begotten again to a lively hope," were 
" kept by the power of God through faith unto 
salvation." There was a needs-be that they 
should be "in heaviness through manifold 
temptations " of their faith, but this trial was 



94 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

most precious to them, and would also be to 
the honor of Jesus Christ at his appearing in 
his kingdom. God not only tried the faith 
of his friend Abraham, but he also tries the 
faith of all those who are the spiritual seed 
of Abraham and heirs according to the 
promise. 

A devout student of Scripture writes thus : 
" Faith has its trials as well as its answers. 
It is not to be imagined that the man of faith, 
having pushed out from the shore of circum- 
stances, finds it all smooth and easy sailing. 
By no means. Again and again he is called 
to encounter rough seas and stormy skies, 
but it is all graciously designed to lead him 
into deeper and more matured experience of 
what God is to the heart that confides in him. 
Were the sky always without a cloud and the 
ocean without a ripple, the believer would not 
know so well the God with whom he has 
to do ; for, alas ! we know how prone the 
heart is to mistake the peace of circumstances 
for the peace of God. When everything is go- 



THE TKIALS OF FAITH. 95 

ing on smoothly and pleasantly, our property 
safe, our business prosperous, our children and 
servants carrying themselves agreeably, our 
residence comfortable, our health excellent — 
everything, in short, just to our mind — how 
apt we are to mistake the peace which reposes 
upon such circumstances for that peace which 
flows from the realized presence of Christ ! 
The Lord knows this, and therefore he comes 
in one way and another and stirs up the 
nest — that is, if we are found nestling in 
circumstances instead of himself." 

The whole word of God is the proper ob- 
ject of the believer's faith ; he should esteem 
every word of God as precious. Just here 
many Christians are sadly at fault. They 
are disposed to regard certain portions of the 
divine word as more sure and steadfast than 
others, some of God's promises as more pre- 
cious and certain of fulfillment than others, 
some truths revealed by him more credible 
than others. But if the faith of the believer 
is to stand, not in the wisdom of men, but in 



96 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

the power of God, then it is manifest that 
every truth revealed and every promise made 
by God is equally and alike steadfast and 
certain ; not one jot or tittle can ever fail. 
True faith receives the testimony of God 
upon his simple word as a Being of infinite 
truth who cannot lie. This is a wholly differ- 
ent thing from receiving the testimony of God 
because it corresponds with our preconceived 
views of what he ought to say and do ; this is 
to find the foundations of faith, not in the in- 
fallible God, but in the finite reason. The 
devil has deceived many an umvary Christian 
on this very point. Christians sometimes use 
such language as the following : " I do not 
believe that such a doctrine is taught in the 
Bible ; and if it is, I will reject the Bible." 
What the objectionable doctrine is, is of no 
consequence just now : the mistake and the 
sin are in saying, "I will reject the word of 
God if it teaches this doctrine." And this 
is gross unbelief in God, and a most hei- 
nous offence. So one condemns and rejects 



THE TRIALS OF FAITH. 97 

the word of God because it teaches the doc- 
trine of election ; another, because it teaches 
the supreme Godhead of Christ ; another, be- 
cause it authorizes the use, at the Lord's Sup- 
per, of wine that, if taken in excess, will in- 
toxicate ; another, because it does not specif- 
ically condemn this or that sin; and so on 
through the entire list of doctrines that are 
distasteful to the depraved heart of man. If 
we believe that the Bible contains the re- 
vealed will of God to man, who is he that 
will thus dare reject the teachings of infinite 
Wisdom because they do not accord with 
finite views of what God ought to teach ? 

In every age of the Church, God has tried 
the faith of his people by demanding of them 
implicit confidence in his word in spite of its 
seeming severity or of the impossibility of its 
accomplishment. He has been teaching his 
children the lesson that their Father in heav- 
en was far more worthy of their confidence 
than anyone else or than all else in the bound- 
less universe. Whatever the hindrances or 
7 



98 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

difficulties or obstacles in the way of his word, 
he, their Father God, was above and superior 
to them all, and his word would surely come 
to pass. 

The testimony of God that tries the faith 
of his saints has respect sometimes to the past, 
at other times to the present, and at yet other 
times to the future ; and in the Scriptures we 
have most signal illustrations of how the con- 
fidence of God's children in their heavenly 
Father triumphed gloriously over all the 
difficulties of sight and of sense. 

Consider how severely the faith of Noah, 
the hero of the antediluvian world, was tried. 
To him God revealed his purpose to destroy 
the race by the waters of a flood, com- 
manding him to build an ark for the saving 
of himself and his house. During the hun- 
dred and twenty years in which God waited 
with a wicked world the faith of Noah was 
on trial. Doubtless the scientists of that age 
demonstrated to the entire satisfaction of the 
whole unbelieving world that such a flood as 



THE TRIALS OF FAITH. 99 

Noah's God had threatened was a scientific 
impossibility. These men, wise in their own 
conceit, may have reasoned thus — just as the 
men of our day reason : " This Hood can never 
come to pass ; Nature is fixed and uniform 
in all her operations. The land and the 
water are separated by indestructible barriers. 
Nature never acts contrary to her own estab- 
lished order. Since the days of Adam the 
windows of heaven have been closed, and 
there has been no rain, nor any catastrophe 
of any sort, upon the earth, and such a flood 
as the one that is threatened is contrary to 
the universal experience of men, and is not 
only impossible, but is incredible even in 
thought. All things will continue as they 
have been from the first; there will be in 
the future, as there have been in the past, evo- 
lution and development, but no flood caused 
by the will and the power of a personal God." 
So the cultured scientific thought of that day 
gave no heed to the word of the living God, 
and the flood came and swept the world away. 



100 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

Noah believed God, obeyed the divine com- 
mand, built the ark to the saving of his 
house, and became heir of the righteousness 
which is by faith. What a trial it must have 
been to him that of all his fellow-men on the 
earth not even one thought and believed as 
he did ! We can hold to our beliefs with 
much greater tenacity when we know that 
multitudes cling to them in common with our- 
selves ; it tests the strength and the steadfast- 
ness of a faith when we hold it singly and 
alone. In this instance one man clings to 
his confidence in God with the whole world 
against him. The true ark-builders of God 
have been in every age an infinitesimal 
minority of the human race. 

Both the Old and the New Testament make 
special mention of the trial of Abraham's 
faith, and, in fact, his entire life was most 
signally marked with trials of his confidence 
in his covenant God. Omitting any mention 
of the minor trials of his faith, let us fix our 
attention on that great test which God him- 



THE TRIALS OF FAITH. 101 

self appointed, and the triumphant endurance 
of which justly entitles him to be called " the 
Father of the Faithful:" "It came to pass that 
God did tempt (try) Abraham ; and said unto 
him, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, 
whom thou lovest, and get thee unto the land 
of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt 
offering, upon one of the mountains which I 
will tell thee of." This man might have 
argued that this command was contrary to the 
very nature which God himself had given 
him, that it would be a most unnatural mur- 
der to slay his only son, that it would be 
subversive of the covenant promises of God, 
that it was in direct conflict with the law of 
God, and that it would prove destructive of 
the covenant of grace which God had made 
with him, and wherein all the nations of the 
earth w T ere to be blessed ; yet so implicit was 
the confidence of the patriarch in his covenant- 
keeping God that he did not hesitate for a 
single moment to obey the divine command. 
He staggered not at the word of the Lord, 
10 



102 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

but, accounting that God was able to raise 
his son from the dead, strong in faith he 
promptly obeyed, giving glory to God. Hav- 
ing thus passed sublimely through the fiery 
ordeal, he had this testimony borne to him 
by the Lord himself: "Now I know that 
thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not with- 
held thy son, thine only son, from me." 

Sometimes God tries the faith of his saints 
by commanding them to do some apparently 
impossible thing, of which the command to 
Joshua and Israel to capture Jericho affords 
a most notable illustration. Jericho was a 
strongly-fortified and walled city, the key to 
the Land of Canaan. Joshua and the chil- 
dren of Israel were commanded to compass 
the city seven days, the priests going before 
the ark of the covenant and blowing upon 
trumpets of rams' horns. On the seventh 
day they were to compass the city seven times, 
the priests to make a long blast with the rams' 
horns and the people to give a great shout, 
and the promise was that the walls of the 



THE TRIALS OF FAITH. 103 

city should fall down flat. The Jericho gen- 
erals doubtless laughed at the simplicity of 
Joshua's faith, and showed conclusively that 
since the creation of the world the walls of 
no city had ever been thrown down in this way, 
and that the entire procedure was a military 
absurdity: and if there had been no living 
personal God in Israel's camp, the Jericho 
generals would have been right in their con- 
clusions. But Joshua's faith in this present 
God was stronger than anything and every- 
thing else besides ; he obeyed the divine com- 
mand because he believed the divine promise. 
The priests blew the horns, the people gave 
the shout, the walls fell flat and the city was 
captured. 

In the case of Noah, faith led him, upon 
the simple word of God, to prepare for an 
event far in the future which the whole world 
declared to be impossible; in the case of 
Abraham, faith enabled him, at the divine 
command, to yield up to God what was far 
dearer to him than life ; in the case of Joshua, 



104 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

faith led him to capture a great and walled 
city with instrumentalities which of them- 
selves were wholly insufficient for the work. 
By faith Noah prepared the ark, by faith 
Abraham offered up Isaac, by faith the walls 
of Jericho fell down; and in each instance 
the faith that so gloriously triumphed was 
severely tried. 

Faith's trial has not yet ended, nor will 
it end until the Lord himself shall descend 
in glory from the skies. Nor should any 
believer suppose, when his faith is tried, that 
some strange thing has happened to him : his 
life from its beginning to its end is a walk 
with God by faith. The language of his 
heart ought to be — 

" So I go on, not knowing ; 
I would not if I might: 
It is better to walk in the dark with God 
Than walk alone in the light." 

Every hope that we cherish concerning the 
life that lies beyond the grave is derived from 
the word of God ; apart from that we have 



THE TKIALS OP FAITH. 105 

no knowledge whatever of that infinite and 
eternal future to which we are so rapidly and 
surely hastening, nor of that glorious and 
blessed life that stretches boundlessly away 
into the unending ages. As it is by faith 
we understand that the worlds were framed 
by the word of God, so also it is by faith 
that we know of the resurrection of the body, 
the heavenly recognition and reunion, the 
fullness of those joys that are at his right 
hand and the pleasures that are for ever- 
more ; and yet the believer's faith is the sub- 
stance of all these hoped-for things and the 
perfectly-satisfying evidence of these certain 
and imperishable realities. 

Now, as heretofore, the believer's faith is 
often tried ; fears arise, doubts distress, Satan 
assails, confidence falters, and the sorely-tempt- 
ed child of God is brought to the brink of 
despair. But the very trial drives him closer 
to God to take refuge in the everlasting lov- 
ing arms of his heavenly Father, and there in 
peace and safety his soul doth abide until the 



106 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

calamities are overpast. The patriarch Jacob, 
even when he had God's promise in his hand 
and heart, cried out in anguish, "-All these 
things are against me ;" and since then thou- 
sands of the saints, as the waves and deep 
billows have gone over them, have lifted up 
the same sad cry : " All these things are 
against me;" yet not one has failed to find 
that under the all-controlling providence of 
God all these things were working together 
for his good. 

How sorely is faith tried when disease 
fastens on the frame, when the days grow 
into weeks, the weeks into months, the months 
into years ; when sharp and grinding poverty 
enters the home, and the wife wants raiment, 
and the children cry for bread ; when death 
comes and lays his hand upon the loved 
one's heart and there is a vacant seat, an ab- 
sent form, a " vanished hand ;" when Jacob 
exclaims, " Me have ye bereft of my chil- 
dren ;" when Rachel weeps for her dead and 
cannot be comforted ! Thrice blessed is the 



THE TRIALS OF FAITH. 107 

man who at such times can rest with unwa- 
vering confidence in the sure mercies of his 
Father in heaven, and who rejoices in his 
Saviour God who giveth songs in the night. 
But through trials and tribulations, through 
storms and tempests, through darkness and 
distress, faith moves steadily on to its final 
triumph and eternal consummation in glory : 
" Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the 
world ; and this is the victory that overcom- 
eth the world, even our faith." 

In this world, and of it a part, we are un- 
der the curse, in the power of the devil and 
under sentence of death, and, dying, we must 
get the victory over it and get out of it into 
a realm of life or else perish for ever. Christ 
has conquered in our place and for us; he 
has gotten the victory over sin, death and 
the devil. Faith unites us to him, lifts us 
out of the sphere of death into that of life? 
unites us as living members to our living 
Head, and so in him we also win the victory, 
and are brought off more than conquerors. 



108 CONFIDENCE IN CHRIST. 

Begotten and born of God, walking by faith 
in the unseen, and not by sight in the seen, 
living lives of faith upon the Son of God, we 
too overcome the world, the lust of the flesh, 
the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, and 
the victory that overcomes this world is our 
faith. Blessed are they that have not seen, 
and yet have believed ! 



THE END. 



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